By
Cass Midgley & Bob Pondillo.
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Bob and Cass interview Rodney and Trish Thompson—a religiously mixed couple. He’s atheist, she’s Catholic and we discuss how they make it work. In this age when so many fearful people run to their polemic corners, demonize those that are different, and are unable to compromise, listen or learn from their opposites, Rod and Trish Thompson model a real-life example of how it can work and work well. To borrow from 1 Peter 4:8, “Love covers a multitude of faults.” In other words, when we love someone, we’re much more prone to overlook their faults, cut them some slack, and give them the benefit of the doubt. In this context, we’re less likely to take things personal, be easily offended, or retaliate. Love is that cache or freecell that absorbs the human difference instead of keeping it in play, further escalating the blow for blow mania. Love also helps us respect the other person’s right to think differently. It may even help us realize that that person’s different perspective does not necessarily have to be a threat to our perspective, unless it reveals weakness in it and can then serve as a catalyst to amend and strengthen our own. Staying in the room with difference has a way of maturing us and deflating the insecure ego that desperately needs to be right. The Thompson’s give us a window into how this type of harmony might be realized in religiously mixed marriages.

We taped this episode on July 31st, 2016. If you’re liking our show, please subscribe to it, give it 5 stars, and/or leave a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, you can support us monetarily on a per episode basis through our Patreon page. That’s www.patreon.com/eapodcast. Or leave a donation through PayPal at our website, www.everyonesagnostic.com.

Dr. Marlene Winell was our guest back on episode 35. She’s a counselor for those recovering from religious trauma. It’s our most poplular episode to date. She called and asked me to plug a retreat she’s got coming up September 9-12th in Berkeley, California. More info is available on her website, journeyfree.org, I’ll put a link in the show notes. A Journey Free Retreat weekend is a chance to come together in a small group with the shared goal of taking steps to recover from harmful religion. Led by Dr. Winell, it provides a safe place to process experiences with the support of others who understand. The 3 day program includes presentations, discussions, and guided activities to facilitate both intellectual insight and emotional growth, providing a leap forward in one’s personal development. Getting through the fear, grief, anger and stress isn’t easy but you don’t have to do it alone. The cost of the retreat is scaled according to your income, so it’s gonna cost between $500 to $700 and they’ll even work out a payment plan. She just wants you to come. So check that out at http://journeyfree.org/retreats/

I also want to mention that I was the featured guest on The Wayward Atheists podcast recently, episode 12. One of the hosts of that show is David E up in Canada. He was our guest on episode 83. So check out episode 12 of the Wayward Atheists, available wherever you listen to podcasts. http://waywardatheists.com/category/podcast/

I also want to thank Carol Kuruvilla, Religion Associate Editor for the Huffington Post, for including the Everyone’s Agnostic podcast in her article, “17 Great Podcasts For The Spiritually Curious.” Most of the other podcasts listed there are either specific to a religion or inter-faith. I believe the only atheist podcast on the list are this one and Freethought Radio hosted by former guest of this show, Dan Barker (that’s episode 72), and his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor. Huff Post article featuring Everyone’s Agnostic

I would also like to point to Sam Harris’ recent podcast episode 41 on his show called “Waking Up.” The episode is titled Faith in Reason and features guest Eric Weinstein. It’s been 11 years since Harris published his book, “The End of Faith,” and he has continued to explore the complexities of Faith and Reason and this particular episode really captures these tensions well. Sam Harris’ Waking Up podcast

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Cass Midgley interviews Jenny Q. Unfortunately Bob's not with us on today's episode. Jenny Q was born in Southern California to Palestinian immigrants. Her love of herbs began in her teens while on the road following the Grateful Dead. She has set her roots in Joshua Tree, California, where she opened Grateful Desert, a local apothecary. In 201 ...…

Welcome everyone to episode 202 of the Everyone’s Agnostic podcast. I’m Cass Midgley. Today, Bob Pondillo and I interview Elisa. Elisa was one of four women featured on Episode 200, the Sexpisode as she called it. We taped both conversations on April 15th, 2018. We interview people you don’t know, about a subject no one wants to talk about. We ...…

Welcome everyone to episode 201 of the Everyone’s Agnostic podcast. I’m Cass Midgley. Today, Bob Pondillo and I interview David Burns. David is now 50, but was a lifelong Mormon. He unpacks his passion for Mormonism, how it was his life, his tribe, his identity. He served his two year door to door mission and it was there that his faith in Morm ...…

On this special occasion of celebrating 200 episodes, we talk about the greatest, most alluring topic known to humankind: SEX. Specifically after leaving a faith this is negatively obsessed with it. We're featuring 4 different interviews, each about 40 minutes long: Two conducted by only Cass Midgley, one with Cass and Bob, and one with guest c ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo converse with Daniel. Daniel is a teacher, coach of a robotics team, and overall computer nerd. He grew up in a small suburb of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and attended a Southern Baptist church until he transitioned to a Charismatic, Non-denominational church in High School. He married his wife of sixteen years, a high ...…

Cass Midgley and Jennifer Kates interview Nicole, who wishes to remain anonymous. Bob was out of town for this one. Nicole was raised as a devout, non-denominational Christian and home-schooled for most of her youth. She gave her life to the lord as a young teen and became involved in the “apostolic church” movement. In her early 20’s, she serv ...…

Cass Midgley talks with Marissa Alexa McCool. Bob was out of town for this taping. This episode is a bit of detour from our regular format. Marissa doesn't have a personal deconversion from faith story, but she does have a gender conversion story that religions generally oppose. I call this episode, much like episode 60 with Callie Wright, back ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo talk with Jennifer Cates. She's a Middle Tennessee State professor here in Murfreesboro where Bob used to teach. She was raised entrenched in Nazarene and Church of Christ southern fried Christianity but found her way out. Jennifer will be helping out here on the show as one of two co-hosts that will jump in wh ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo talk with married couple Janet and Chad. They both are optometrists, they both deconverted but at different times and the calibration of that kind of dissonance is no easy task, but they've done and they share how they negotiated that and stayed married, in fact very happily married. This an emotional story with a ...…

Cass Midgley talks with Ryan Connell. Cohost Bob Pondillo was not able to be there for the conversation. Ryan is an Assembly of God pastor's son and himself was in ministry and aspiring to be a pastor like his father. But his pursuit of truth and love took him to some unexpected places. Ryan is the homeschooled son of a pentecostal pastor and w ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Rosie in Great Britain. Rosie's dad was a pastor and in the late 70s co-founded the apostolic, pentecostal church called Newfrontiers International. Today it has hundreds of churches worldwide. At age 12 Rosie was subjected to a traumatizing exorcism for an eating disorder, which of course didn't work but ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Mary D. She's right here in the Nashville area so she was here in the studio. She has quite a journey through Catholicism, alcoholism, various protestant and evangelical churches and strangely (and unique to any other guest on this podcast) hypnosis. Even though Mary has been involved in many churches ove ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Rogier Bos, Skyped in from the Netherlands. Raised by YWAM parents (and he himself YWAMer). He eventually got an M.A. in World-evangelization and worked in church planting for over 20 years. A Behavioral Science class in college started a slow-motion earthquake underneath his evangelical worldview. It all ...…

Cass Midgley and Dave Warnock interview Del and Jess from Australia. Del is a lifelong atheist raised by atheist parents. Jess is her daughter in law who was raised Mormon, trained in the track of female subservient wifehood , and forced to marry in the church at age 18 or be excommunicated out of the only community she'd known, including her i ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Matt Vollmer, a former Vineyard church worship leader, and a gay man. I've never included a straight guest's sexual orientation during the introduction, but I highlight Matt's because it's a big part of his deconversion story. He didn't allow himself to be himself til he was 44. His departure from faith f ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview another Canadian guest, 2 weeks in a row. A guest we talked to back in October of 2015 on episode 67, Gretta Vosper. Gretta is an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada who is an atheist. Her latest book is titled, "Time or Too Late: Chasing the Dream of a Progressive Christian Faith. Her other ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview a Canadian guest who'll go by the name Freddy to protect his identity. He's not fully out to his friends, family and co-workers. His faith began to crumble when he discovered that his dear, dear Lutheran grandma who raised him was going to hell according to his Church of Christ . I admire the image of an ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Joy Hopper. She's the author of her memoir, "Joy Unspeakable: Toxic Faith and Rose Colored Glasses." This is the quintessential EA episode. Joy's story is many abused Christian women's stories, and yet Joy shares the tragic details with the timbre of an upbeat college girl. Before we get into our talk wit ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Derreck Bennett. Derreck is the author a book entitled, Addictus, which is a word for someone who is a debt slave; a person who has been bound as a slave to his creditor. Derrick agrees with step 1 of the 12 steps that he is powerless over alcohol but most AA groups take that powerlessness to a degree in ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Joel de los Santos. Joel currently lives in Canada but was raised in the Dominican Republic. His Christian journey started as Catholic, then Unity Church, following his parents lead, then he took his own path to evangelical charismatic non-denominational. He and his wife have two sons, his eldest is on th ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Keith B. Keith is a software engineer, dancer, and ex-Creationist living in Augusta, GA. He came from a homeschooling Independent Fundamental Baptist family in southern California, got a degree in Biology at Pensacola Christian College, and moved to Georgia to start a secular PhD program in Biology. While ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Valerie Torico. Dr. Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer with a passion for personal and social evolution. Today, we discuss Tarico’s book, Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light, offers personal insight into how we can apply “constructive curiosity” to our most cl ...…

Today, we bring you two guests: One is a follow-up interview with former guest of the show on episode 108, Marie. But before that Dave Warnock and Cass Midgley talk with Mark Russell about his book, "God is Disappointed in You." Marie was a hard-core YWAMmer, an extremely devout Christian and her deconversion was long and difficult. It was arou ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview "Elle." She's not out to many of her friends and family as having left the Christian faith in which she was raised: Plymouth Brethren and a part of the Quiverfull Movement. She has a lot to say about women's issues, adopting orphans with down syndrome, her son coming out as gay, and the abundance of sexua ...…

Cass Midgley talks with 3 former guests of this podcast on the subjects of Death, Depression and Suicide. My first guest is Zoe from episode 120 going by the same pseudonym she used back then. Today's episode came out of a desire to conduct follow up shows with former guests to see how their journey is going. Zoe's husband of 12 years committed ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo talk with Jeff Haley and Dale McGowan, authors of "SHARING REALITY: How to Bring Secularism and Science to an Evolving Religious World." Jeff T. Haley is a scientist, lawyer, and inventor. He has argued before the U.S Supreme Court, and founded and directed the nonprofit that led Washington state's successful m ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo talk with Joshua Lennon. Joshua is a quality control manager for a metal Factory in Pennsylvania. It's there that he discovered podcasts and listened his entire shift during his deconversion. He and his atheist and veterinarian wife of 6 years have a 3 year old son. Joshua has been obsessed with all things scie ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo talk with Lisa Hope. She Skyped in from the Netherlands. She and her husband are US Diplomats. Lisa was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian in rural Pennsylvania. She became a SDA Pastor and was a Chaplain on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville, and it’s just in the past year that Lisa has begun ...…

Cass Midgley and guest co-host and fellow ex-pastor Dave Warnock interview Shanna in Canada. After a portent encounter with "god" that left her searching for answers and doubting god's goodness, Shanna set out on a three year search to discover how the God she loved and devoted her life to could hunger for his own glory in the face of her suffe ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo converse with Elliot, an expert in sexual misconduct in the workplace, and a second guest, Lauren Martin Day, a woman who has experienced unethical sexual and relational misconduct. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” This episode is about sex. It is a deto ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo converse with Thomas Amun. Thomas grew up in the heart of Memphis until he was 18 years of age. A young Christian boy who was on his way to Nashville to attend a Private Christian College and play his favorite sport, basketball. While things were working on the court, Thomas found himself having moments in the clas ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo converse with Rusty Shackleford. That's not his real name. Like many of our guests, they're not completely out as non-religious to everyone and for their own personal reasons wish to keep it that way. Rusty is a 31 year old mental health counselor. He holds two Master’s Degrees in Early Childhood Development/Ed ...…

Cass and Bob converse with Dustin Lawson. Dustin spent a year traveling all over North America, Europe, and the Middle East as the assistant to Christian apologist, Josh McDowell. Dustin took McDowell's advice and rigorously scrutinized all the arguments he was espousing, only to find holes that McDowell couldn't defend. After losing his faith ...…

Cass and Bob converse with Tony Hupp. Tony is the father of Josh Hupp, our guest on episode 158. It might be good to listen to that episode first, if you haven't already. This talk gets very emotional. Tony was in the Air Force for 24 years. He has two sons whom he loves very much and Josh was brainwashed by a cult in Tulsa, Oklahoma for severa ...…

Cass Midgley converses with Martin Hughes, a pseudonym he blogs under to differentiate his blogging from his role as a college professor. Martin is the writer of the Barrierbreaker blog on the Patheos network. He holds a PhD in Modern American Literature and an MA (with distinction) in English. As someone who grew up in the Quiverfull movement, ...…

Cass Midgley converses with Kamaria Powell. Kamaria G. Powell was one of those individuals who never felt like one religion was right for her, so she filled her shopping cart of faith with whatever she liked from variety of religions and cultures. She expanded her own definition of what it means to be spiritual. Kamaria was born and raised in B ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo converse with Sean Ritter of Wichita, Kansas. He's kind of a good ole boy from a fly-over state but his wit and intellect took us by surprise. Sean is a 40 something father of 3 from Kansas still married to his high school sweetheart. Sean works in middle management for a warehousing company and is a do-it your ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo interview an ex-Christian married couple in their mid-twenties who are using the names David & Arrianna. They grew up in very different christian homes. David was brought up in a deeply fundamental, Pentecostal christian household. A literal reading of the bible was adhered to - the bible was considered THE wor ...…

Before we get into this week’s episode, a brief word about this week’s events around white-supremacy and the President’s remarks. His insistence on imputing violence on “both sides,” completely misses the point, of course, in that one side’s resistance, however imperfect, has been justified since at least the 1940’s by the historically proven a ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo interview Dr. Marlene Winell. This is our second interview with Marlene, back in March of 2015 on Episode 35. She is the founder and director of JourneyFree.org. Journey Free is dedicated to helping people transition out of harmful religions, recover from trauma, and rebuild their lives. They develop programs f ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo interview Bonnie & Clyde. They wish to remain incognito. They are a middle-aged married couple in a southern state in the US. And their story is almost as amazing as their personalities. Bonnie was a normal college kid who participated in normal college kid stuff. But her southern Baptist upbringing tainted nor ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo discuss the recent prayer in the oval office, the problem with praising god for intervening in your life, and how atheism remains the best practice of theism. If you're listening for the first time, we normally have a guest who unpacks their life journey, especially as it pertains to them deconstructing their c ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo interview Rebecca Fox. Rebecca is the artist and author of a new graphic novel titled "Murmurs of Doubt: Twelve Skeptical Graphic Novellas." She's British and was raised by apatheist parents but got caught up in the Wiccan religion in her teens. Rebecca is an impressive, sharp communicator with an interesting p ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo interview Dr. Karen Garst. She blogs at faithlessfeminist.com, she is the author of "Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion." In 2014, the U. S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. She was incensed and thought, “Since when did a ‘corporation’ get to use its religious bel ...…

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Josh Hupp. Josh has spent the last ten years trying to rebuild his life and identity after escaping the grip of a Christian Cult he was in for 10 years. As per the cult leader's demands, he broke off ties with his family, physically abused fellow cult members, and was himself beat up by other cult members ...…

Cass Midgley interviews Cheri Jamison. Cheri grew up in Self-Realization Fellowship (founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920), a sort of blend of Christianity and Hinduism, and went through a very painful transition out of it around 2007. She faced a rude awakening regarding her naive ambitions about SRF while taking a religious studies class ...…

Cass Midgley interviews Brian Peck. Brian is a licensed clinical social worker in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in faith transitions and religious-based trauma. His practice, Room to Thrive PLLC grew out of a desire to reduce the suffering unique to faith transitions and to trauma experienced within a religious context. We taped this conversati ...…

Cass Midgley features two guests: a return visit with author Jeff Bates on his new book, "Zombies R A Problem." And our second guest is the sister of our guest from episode 147, Josey, the eldest of 12 home-schooled kids, well this is Hannah, the next born who preceded Josey in leaving the house and leaving Christianity and she's quite a strong ...…

Cass Midgley and Dr. Bob Pondillo interview Ginna. Ginna is a 32 year old software engineer living and working in New York City. She graduated from St. Olaf College with degrees in history and English, but transitioned into software development after the recession hit. Ginna grew up in a non-denominational / charismatic Christian household. Fro ...…

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